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which the King very frequently revives the mention, had two motives, religion and policy. He durst not wear the ill-gotten crown without expiation, but in the act of expiation he contrives to make his wickedness successful. JOHNSON.

Line 951. How I came by the crown, O God, forgive!] This is a true picture of a mind divided between heaven and earth. He prays for the prosperity of guilt while he deprecates its punishJOHNSON.

ment.

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Line 1. By cock and pye,] Cock is only a corruption of the Sacred Name, as appears from many passages in the old interJudes, Gammer Gurton's Needle, &c. viz. Cocks-bones, cocks-wounds, by cock's-mother, and some others.

The pie is a table or rule in the old Roman offices, showing, in a technical way, how to find out the service which is to be read upon each day. STEEVENS.

Line 4. I will not excuse you; &c.] The sterility of Justice Shallow's wit is admirably described, in thus making him, by one of the finest strokes of nature, so often vary his phrase, to express one and the same thing, and that the commonest. WARB.

Line 12. —those precepts cannot be served:] Precept is a justice's warrant. To the offices which Falstaff gives Davy in the following scene, may be added that of justice's clerk. Davy has almost as many employments as Scrub in The Stratagem. JOHNS. Line 30. -A friend i'the court &c.] "A friend in court is worth a penny in purse," is one of Camden's proverbial sentences. See his Remaines, 4to. 1605.

Line 66.

MALONE.

-bearded hermit's-staves-] He had before called him the starved justice. His want of flesh is a standing jest.

JOHNSON.

JOHNSON.

Line $5. -two actions,] There is something humorous in making a spendthrift compute time by the operation of an action for debt. Line 87. fellow that never had the ache-] That is, a young fellow, one whose disposition to merriment time and pain. have not yet impaired.

JOHNSON.

ACT V. SCENE II.

Line 142. A ragged and forestall'd remission.] Ragged has no sense here. We should read:

A rated and forestall' d remission.

i. e. a remission that must be sought for, and bought with suppli cation. WARBURTON.

Different minds have different perplexities. I am more puzzled with forestall'd than with ragged; for ragged, in our author's licentious diction, may easily signify beggarly, mean, base, igno minious; but forestall'd I know not how to apply to remission in any sense primitive or figurative. I should be glad of another word, but cannot find it. Perhaps, by forestall'd remission, he may mean a pardon begged by a voluntary confession of offence, and anticipation of the charge. JOHNSON.

Line 152.

-not the Turkish court;] Not the court where the prince that mounts the throne puts his brothers to death.

Line 153. Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,

JOHNSON.

But Harry Harry:] Amurath the Third (the sixth emperor of the Turks) died on January the 18th, 1595-6. The people being generally disaffected to Mahomet, his eldest son, and inclined to Amurath, one of his younger children, the em peror's death was concealed for ten days by the Janizaries, till Mahomet came from Amasia to Constantinople. On his arrival he was saluted emperor, by the great Bassas, and others his favourers; "which done, (says Knolles,) he presently after caused. all his brethren to be invited to a solemn feast in the court; whereunto they, yet ignorant of their father's death, came chearfully, as men fearing no harm: but, being come, were there all most miserably strangled." It is highly probable that Shakspeare here alludes to this transaction; which was pointed out to me by Dr. Farmer.

This circumstance, therefore, may fix the date of this play subsequently to the beginning of the year 1596; and perhaps it was written while this fact was yet recent. MALONE.

Line 194. To trip the course of law,] To defeat the process of justice; a metaphor taken from the act of tripping a runner. JOHNS.

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Line 197. And mock your workings in a second body.] To treat with contempt your acts executed by a representative. JOHNSON.

Line 231. My father is gone wild-] The meaning is-My wild dispositions having ceased on my father's death, and being now as it were buried in his tomb, he and wildness are interred in the same grave. MALONE.

Line 282.

ACT V. SCENE III.

proface!] Italian from profaccia; that is, much HANMER.

good may it do you. Line 290. And welcome merry shrove-tide.] It appears that shrove-tide was the sporting and feasting season.

Line 296. -leather-coats-] An apple now known by the name of russetine.

Line 304.

-now comes in the sweet of the night.] I believe the latter words [those in the speech of Silence] make part of some old ballad. In one of Autolycus's songs we find—

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Why then comes in the sweet of the year."

The words, And we shall be merry, have a reference to a song, of which Silence has already sung a stanza. His speeches in this scene are, for the most part, fragments of ballads. Though his imagination did not furnish him with any thing original to say, he could repeat the verses of others. MALONE.

Line 313. —cavaleroes-] This was the term by which an airy, splendid, irregular fellow was distinguished. The soldiers of king Charles were called Cavaliers from the gaiety which they affected in opposition to the sour faction of the parliament.

JOHNSON.

Line 328. And dub me knight:] It was the custom of the good fellows of Shakspeare's days to drink a very large draught of wine, and sometimes a less palatable potation, on their knees, to the health of their mistress. He who performed this exploit was dubb'd a knight for the evening. MALONE.

Line 329. Samingo.] He means to say, San Domingo. HANM. The burthen of an old song.

Line 343.

but goodman Puff of Barson.] Barston is a vil

lage lying near Solyhull in Warwickshire.

Mr. Warton, in a note on The Taming of the Shrew, says, that

Wilnecote, (or Wincot,) is a village in Warwickshire, near Stratford. I suppose, therefore, in a former scene, we should read Wincot instead of Woncot. MALONE. Line 357. Let king Cophetua &c.] The ballad of The king (Cophetua) and the Beggar, may be found in Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, vol. I. MALONE.

Line 364. Why then, lament therefore.] This was perhaps intended to be ridiculed by Ben Jonson, in his Poetaster, 1602:

"Why then, lament therefore. Damn'd be thy guts

"Unto king Pluto's hell."

MALONE.

He might, however, have meant nothing more than to quote a
popular play.
Line 369.

Bezonian?] From bisognoso, a needy persons
THEOBALD.

thence, metaphorically, a base scoundrel.

Line 377. fig me, &c.] To fig, in Spanish, higas dar, is to insult by putting the thumb between the fore and middle finger. From this Spanish custom we yet say in contempt, 66 a fig for

you."

JOHNSON,

ACT V. SCENE IV.

Line 410. Nut-hook, &c.] It has been already observed, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, that nut-hook seems to have been in those times a name of reproach for a catchpoll. JOHNSON,

A nut-hook was, I believe, a person who stole linen, &c. out at windows, by means of a pole with a hook at the end of it.

Line 424.

STEEVENS

-blue-bottle-rogue!] A name, I suppose, given JOHNSON!

to the beadle, from the colour of his livery.

Dr. Johnson is right with respect to the livery, but the allusion seems to be to the great flesh fly, commonly called a blue-bottle.. FARMER:

Line 426. -half-kirtles.] A half-kirtle was I suppose the same kind of thing as we call at present a short-gown, or a bedgown. There is a proverbial expression now in use which may serve to confirm it. When a person is loosely dressed, they say— Such a one looks like a win a bed-gown. STEEVENS,

Line 435. Thou atomy thou!] Atomy, i. e. anatomy.

ACT V. SCENE V.

Line 438. More rushes, &c.] It has been already observed, that, at ceremonial entertainments, it was the custom to strew the floor with rushes. Caius de Ephemera. JOHNSON.

Line 496. —profane ;] In our author it often signifies love of talk, without the particular idea now given it. "Is he not a profane and very liberal counsellor ?"

So, in Othello:
JOHNSON.

Line 499. —know, the grave doth gape &c.] Nature is highly touched in this passage. The king having shaken off his vanities, schools his old companion for his follies with great severity he assumes the air of a preacher, bids him fall to his prayers, seek grace, and leave gormandizing. But that word unluckily presenting him with a pleasant idea, he cannot forbear pur suing it. Know, the grave doth gape for thee thrice wider, &c. and is just falling back into Hal, by an humorous allusion to Falstaff's bulk; but he perceives it immediately, and fearing Sir John should take the advantage of it, checks both himself and the knight, with

Reply not to me with a fool-born jest ;

and so resumes the thread of his discourse, and goes moralizing on to the end of the chapter. Thus the poet copies nature with great skill, and shows us how apt men are to fall back into their old customs, when the change is not made by degrees, and brought into habit, but determined of at once, on the motives WARBURTON.

of honour, interest, or reason. Line 511. Not to come near our person &c.] Mr. Rowe observes, that many readers lament to see Falstaff so hardly used by his old friend. But if it be considered, that the fat knight has never uttered one sentiment of generosity, and with all his power of exciting mirth, has nothing in him that can be esteemed, no great pain will be suffered from the reflection that he is compelled to live honestly, and maintained by the king, with a promise of advancement when he shall deserve it.

I think the poet more blameable for Poins, who is always represented as joining some virtues with his vices, and is therefore treated by the prince with apparent distinction, yet he does nothing

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